Dubai sets a record: AED 286B in property deals in the first half of 2026

Dubai’s property market closed the first six months of 2026 with AED 286.4 billion in recorded transactions, roughly $78 billion at current rates. The figure is larger than the total registered in any full year before 2021, and it was reached during a period of open geopolitical tension across the region. For a market that many observers expected to pause, the half-year result points in the opposite direction: capital kept arriving, and it arrived in larger cheques than before.

Muhammad, top Estate Broker at Gorilla Real Estate Dubai, shared his reading of the half-year in a market review published on the company’s channel. His central point is that the headline number matters less than the change in who is producing it. The buyer profile has shifted, he says, and that shift explains why volumes held up through months when sentiment elsewhere in the region was fragile.

The money has changed shape

According to the review, the most active segment in the first half was not the small individual investor buying a studio for yield, but buyers working with budgets between $10 million and $30 million. These are purchasers treating Dubai as a long-term position rather than a trade, and they are building portfolios across several assets instead of chasing a single unit. That kind of capital tends to be slower to enter a market and slower to leave it, which is part of why the half-year figures stayed firm while regional headlines were unsettled.

The tension itself, Muhammad notes, has become part of the negotiating environment. Buyers at this level have used the uncertainty of recent months to press developers for better terms, particularly on payment schedules, extended instalments and post-handover structures. Where a smaller buyer sees risk and waits, a larger one sees leverage and signs. The result is that a meaningful share of the deals recorded in the first half were closed on conditions that would have been harder to obtain in a calmer quarter.

Where the demand is concentrated

The review identifies several places where demand is currently running ahead of what the market can supply:

• Quality villas and townhouses. Family-sized low-rise homes of good build quality remain in short supply, and the gap between what buyers are looking for and what is actually available has widened rather than closed.
• Three-bedroom apartments. Demand for larger family layouts has been consistent, while most new towers are still weighted toward studios and one-bedroom units.
• Grade A commercial space. Office and commercial assets of the highest specification are producing returns that Muhammad puts as high as 15 to 16 per cent, a level residential stock in the same city does not approach.

The reason for the residential shortage is structural rather than temporary. Most of what has been launched in Dubai over the past few years has been apartments, because a developer earns more from a plot by building upwards than by laying out streets of houses. Land that suits low-rise family communities sits further from the centre and takes longer to deliver, so villa and townhouse supply responds to demand with a lag measured in years, not months.

What the numbers do not say

A record half-year is not, on its own, a reason to buy. Muhammad’s closing advice is to treat the figure as context rather than as a signal, and to approach a purchase as a planning exercise: define the horizon, choose the asset class that matches it, and check the developer’s delivery record before the brochure. Buying on momentum, he argues, is how investors end up holding the wrong unit in the right city.

The half-year figures and the segment breakdown cited here come from a market review on the Gorilla Real Estate Youtube channel, where the company publishes its regular commentary on the Dubai market.